Wednesday, January 28, 2015

State-Wide Health Insurance Clears SFC 14-0!

This morning
in the Senate Finance Committee, The Chafin/Vogel Statewide health insurance
bill, SB866, reported on a vote of 14-0.This is a VEA initiated bill, and it is now headed to the floor of the
senate on the uncontested calendar.The
bill was amended to allow inclusion school board and local government
employees.

SJ 256as Senate Resolution to place on the ballot
and Constitutional amendment to grant the Board of Education
authority, subject to criteria and conditions prescribed by the General
Assembly, to establish charter schools within the school divisions of the
Commonwealth reported from the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee on a
8-7 party-line vote yesterday evening.

In a very
interesting development, Senator Toddy Puller’s SB1021 was amended in the
Public Education Subcommittee of Senate Health and Education this morning.The added language is underlined:“… the Board of Education may waive the
requirement that school divisions provide additional teaching days or teaching
hours to compensate for school closings resulting from a declared state of
emergency or severe weather conditions or other emergency situations.” This language could be most helpful when we
have winters like we had last school year.This bill now goes to full committee.

An
unexpected victory this morning the House Education Committee was the failure
of HB2238 to report.Please see
yesterday’s posting for details on this bill.The committee vote is not posted as I write.I hope we won’t see post-meeting vote
switching.As Henry Howell used to say, “There’s
more sneaking around in the middle of the night in Richmond than Santa Claus.”